


Faceless

by aj_linguistik



Series: SAO Prideweek 2019 [6]
Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Acceptance, F/F, One Shot, SAO Pride Week 2019, Trans Female Character, Trans Female Kirito
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 12:55:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18446999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aj_linguistik/pseuds/aj_linguistik
Summary: Written for SAO Prideweek 2019's Day 6 prompt: Acceptance.Every time I dream, it's the same weird occurrence. It's unsettling. No matter what the dream is, no matter whether I view it through my own eyes or as a spectator watching myself, I have no face. I can only wonder what that means.





	Faceless

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Wait, a Kirisuna fic in Prideweek? Whaaaat. Yeah, I know. But since I wanted to go with trans girl Kirito anyways, ~they're lesbians Harold~ it's just how it is. See notes at the bottom for more commentary after you read.
> 
> A big thanks to @camomilafil for beta-reading.

           When I closed my eyes at night and slipped away into the world of dreams, the same bizarre phenomenon would always happen, no matter what the content of the dream or nightmare happened to be. I knew that I, Kirigaya Kazuto, was the main character of those dreams, but for some reason…

…I could never see my own face.

It would look sort of like when someone’s face was blurred out on television. There always was a very distinct body, which did indeed have a head and a face, but that face had no features I could make out. Occasionally—and very rarely—I would see someone else and perceive them as myself. The face, however, still remained pixelated.

Honestly, I thought it was something everyone experienced at first. But I overheard Suguha once describing a dream where she miserably failed to block her opponent in kendo and she could see the shame and embarrassment on her own face in the dream. I later asked Asuna about it, and with a funny look on her face, she told me that she could, in fact, see her own face in her dreams if she happened to look into some type of reflection.

The situation puzzled me. I began to ask my friends and family to describe what their dreams looked like in detail. Like, _excruciating_ detail, if I could get them to. Some saw dreams in color, some saw them as flat images, some saw them distorted, some played out like visual novels—there were lots of things varying from dreamer to dreamer, but they all seemed to agree on the same point.

They could all see their own face.

I began to wonder if it was simply just a weird quirk of my own dreaming state. After all, everyone else had weird things going on in their dreams. Klein mentioned that he always appeared in dreams dressed in just his underwear. Lisbeth noted that she always had her pink SAO hair in her dreams, even though she’d seen that in dreams well before the SAO Incident. So, then, by that train of thought, wasn’t my inability to see my own face just a characteristic of my dreams?

For a while, I thought nothing more of it. Sure, it was unsettling to go to bed, have a vivid dream, but yet never see my face. It wasn’t like there was a clear way to fix that issue, though. If it was natural, I’d have to just deal with it. There was no need to dwell on the fact that I dreamt in an odd way—dreams, by definition, tended to be, well…odd.

But one night, I shut my eyes, submitted to the world of sleep, and opened them to stare at my own face in the reflection of a mirror. My hair was longer—wait, I’d seen that hair before! The dream didn’t last long, as I sat up in bed and grasped at my own head.

“Was that…my GGO avatar?” I mumbled.

I went back to sleep and ended up having another faceless dream. I was playing ALO with my friends, but then everything after that went black. I don’t remember the rest. I woke up sometime later in a cold sweat. It must have been a night terror. I didn’t go back to sleep. I worked on a project on my computer, talked to Yui for a bit, eventually got up for breakfast, and then left the house to meet up with Asuna.

* * *

 

“You’re saying that for the first time in your life, you saw your face in a dream, and it’s this new avatar you’re using from GGO?” Asuna summarized. “What does the avatar look like, if you don’t mind me asking?”

I gripped my coffee cup tightly.

“Um, well…it has long hair…is kinda…delicate and feminine-looking,” I said, refusing to make eye contact with her. “I-I mean, I thought I’d been logged in as a girl for the first few minutes. But I checked…I was definitely a male avatar.”

When I looked up, Asuna was giving me an unamused glare.

“You _checked_?” she said. “Checked _what_?”

I frowned at her.

“The…the status window!” I exclaimed.

Sighing, I quickly changed the topic back to my original concern.

“But what do you think that means?” I asked her. “All of the sudden I can see my face in my dream, but it just so happens to be this new avatar? Why have I never dreamed of myself as Kirito in other avatars? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Asuna hummed, tapping her finger against the side of her cup. I didn’t know for a fact that she’d know anything about interpreting major things in dreams, but she generally had those kinds of answers. She was a good all-around student who picked up all sorts of bits and pieces of knowledge from various subjects.

“I’d have to say that that avatar is making you think about something,” she said, shrugging. “If it bothers you this much, maybe think about how you feel using the avatar and why it makes you feel that way. The answer is in your head—your dreams just process thoughts that are already there.”

I swirled the coffee cup around and stared down into my drink. As it spun around the cup, I could feel my thoughts running in circles. I thanked her for her input and at least verbally put the matter away for the rest of our date. When I left to go to the hospital, it was still, to my dismay, spinning inside my head.

* * *

 

Standing in front of a reflective wall, I stared at myself in the avatar in question and thought about what Asuna had said earlier. How _did_ I feel about using this avatar? At first, I’d been alarmed, but something in me had insisted I act like a girl to Sinon. If not for the fact that I’d not wanted to have an awkward changing situation, I’d probably still be acting that way.

But why?

What about this avatar made acting like a girl seem appropriate? It came naturally, as if this was how I was supposed to act. It felt _right_. I wondered, then, if anyone would find it out of place for me to behave this way outside of GGO. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I took a step away from the reflection. I stared down at my avatar.

There was something I needed to do when I logged out.

* * *

 

A few weeks later, I slipped out of the house as discreetely as possible, yelling for Suguha to not worry about where I was going. I hopped on my bike and drove off towards Sinon’s school. I’d picked her up here a few days after the Death Gun situation was over with to take her to talk to Kikuoka, but this time, she didn’t know I was coming. I parked in the same place as before and waited. I fiddled with my jacket.

I glanced around. The streets were filled with the usual afternoon traffic. I didn’t know why I thought Sinon would be near her school on a Saturday—I guess it was a hunch. But either way, I was waiting here in the hopes that Sinon would walk past me. My helmet was still on, so I wasn’t sure if she’d recognize me or not. Fortunately, she answered that question by announcing her presence so suddenly behind me.

“Kirigaya?!”

I jumped and turned around, almost tripping over my own feet. Sinon looked at me funny, glanced down at what I was wearing, and then squinted her eyes. She crossed her arms. I wanted to turn and run.

“That is you, right, Kirito?” she asked.

My head nodded before I even had time to think whether or not I wanted an easy out.

“Could I…ask a question?” she asked.

“Um…I guess so,” I said.

She pointed at my shoes.

“Are those…women’s shoes?”

I stared down at my feet, feeling a knot form in my stomach.

“Yes.”

I lifted my head to see her holding her hand up a second time. She seemed much more hesitant to point out the other thing that was throwing her off. Sinon put her hand down and took a deep breath.

“Why is your helmet still on?”

I touched the sides of my helmet and frowned.

“P-promise you won’t laugh?” I asked.

She raised an eyebrow.

“Are you okay?”

“Just…just promise.”

Sighing, Sinon nodded her head.

“I promise.”

Grasping the helmet more firmly, I slowly lifted it off my head. Sinon gasped in surprise. Longer hair fell out of it, somewhat messily. It probably hadn’t been a great idea to put a wig underneath a motorcycle helmet, now that I thought about it. I set the helmet down on my bike and started to smooth down the wig.

“Kirito, I—”

“I don’t know why you were the first person I thought of, but I think it’s because of what happened in GGO,” I said. “At the time, I thought that I didn’t want to be a boy standing there next to you in such a private situation, but I’ve been doing some thinking and—”

Now it was her turn to cut me off.

“Stop, wait, go back,” she said. “What are you trying to tell me? Is this a hobby of yours? I mean, it’s okay, I just…I’m confused.”

I shook my head.

“It’s not a hobby,” I said. “I’m not a drag queen or anything…I think…I think I’m actually just…”

I’d never said it out loud before. Even after weeks of putting most of my energy into thinking about it, I’d never spoken it out loud to anyone—not even my own reflection. Accepting that this was who I was still was quite difficult. I didn’t know anyone else like this. I didn’t know how people would react.

I took a deep breath.

_Don’t think. Accept._

“No, I don’t think, Sinon,” I said. “I _know._ ”

“Know what?”

“That I’m…a girl.”

I held my breath. I waited. Our eyes locked. My heart raced. I should have been focused on what _her_ reaction would be, but instead of waiting for her to react, I felt my knees start to shake. I leaned back against my bike and covered my mouth.

“I actually said it…”

Tears welled up in my eyes. I couldn’t cry here! I covered my face, embarrassed and unable to stop myself from crying. After a moment of lonely crying, I felt Sinon’s arms wrap around me. She gently rubbed my back.

“I’m glad you said it, if it’s that important to you,” she said quietly. “But isn’t there someone else who should know?”

She pushed me away so she could look at me. I wiped the tears off my cheeks and gazed at her. Sinon was right. Our eyes met again. She smiled at me. I managed to smile back at her.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

I shook my head.

“I’ve got to tell her on my own.”

* * *

 

I’d called Asuna and asked her if we could meet up. She said she would, her voice sounding worried. I must have come across as nervous. I waited at the spot I’d said I would meet her at, glancing around to see if people were staring at me. No one really paid me any attention. Relieved, I skimmed the crowd, looking for Asuna. When I saw her turn the corner, I perked up.

The moment her eyes rested on me, I could tell she was just as confused as Sinon had been. She hurried over to me and kept tilting her head up and down, taking in what was different. I bit my lip and waited for her to speak first.

“Kirito-kun, what’s going on?” she asked.

“Remember…when we talked about that dream a few weeks ago?”

She grasped me by the wrist and pulled me out of the sidewalk to sit down on a bench. We sat down. I didn’t want her to let go of my hand. I squeezed it gently. Asuna tilted her head and looked at me, worry very apparent on her face.

“Yeah, I remember that,” she said.

“I’m not faceless in my dreams anymore, Asuna.”

Her eyes widened. I squeezed her fingers tighter.

“Ever since I started looking at myself this way, I’ve been seeing my face in my dreams,” I said. “Your words that day really made me think, you know? And the more I thought about it, the more I started to realize that this, this is who I really am.”

Asuna blinked at me, still not following.

“Who you…really are?”

I nodded.

“I’m not Kazuto,” I said, casting her a nervous glance. “And I’m not sure who I am yet, but whatever her name is, she’s still the same me. Just…no longer faceless.”

“She…?” Asuna repeated.

I nodded again.

“Yeah,” I said.

Hearing her use the word “she,” even if not directly at me, made me feel warm.

“If you don’t want to date a girl, I won’t be offended,” I said, trailing off.

Asuna quickly pulled me into a hug.

“Don’t be so quick to think I’m leaving the person I fell in love with in Aincrad!” she said, embracing me with all of her might. “I fell in love with Kirito back then, and I still love Kirito now. And I’m proud of her for having the courage to share this with me.”

I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face in her shoulder, softly crying.

“It feels better, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Accepting yourself.”

Unable to form words, I simply nodded.

“I love you,” she said.

“I-I love you, too,” I said.

She laughed.

“My girlfriend is just a big softie, isn’t she?”

I couldn’t help but laugh as well. When we parted, she leaned over and gave me a kiss on the lips. It was her way of telling me that nothing had changed. She was still my girlfriend, and I was still hers.

* * *

 

After accepting myself, I never had a faceless dream again. When I closed my eyes, that strange body bearing no face no longer appeared—instead, I always saw a girl. She smiled and laughed and cried and frowned as the dream played out. And when she caught a glimpse of her reflection, she always—ALWAYS—had a face. 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Okay, so, this piece is arguably my favorite. It holds a special place in my heart because while the story is about a trans girl (and I'm a trans guy), I chose to make some of it autobiographical by including the faceless dreams. I remember having that dream where I first saw my face and waking up in tears and holding onto myself going "Oh my god, that's me. He's ME." 
> 
> I might choose to write more with this. I fell very hard for trans girl Kirito being supported by her girlfriend while writing this and feel like she deserves more of my attention.


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